Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Facebook makes it so easy to put up a short sentence about things that are happening in your life that I sometimes forget I haven't mentioned things here at the blog.

On that note, C2 get thee back to your blog!

My gorgeous cousin (24years old) was just diagnosed with Type II diabetes - that's the juvenile one where she needs to take insulin. Pancreas is shot from what the docs presume was an untreated infection - she works with children and the doc asked her if she had had strep recently. Uh, yeah, check, check and check!

She's been having problems for over a year - can you believe her family doc never had her sugar tested in all that time? Luckily the people she worked with noticed how thirsty she was and how tired she looked. At one point her boss told her she was going to call her mother. Funny that, but I guess they were looking to the family and asking 'aren't you seeing this?!' and none of us did. Aunt N knew the call was going to come as GC had told her so the day her boss sent her home and told her to get to a doc she also called Aunt N.

Meanwhile, for months GC had been going to her family doc and a vitamin D deficiency was diagnosed which had me scratching my head. Then GC fell and sprained her ankle - hospital visit and still, no tests even though GC was clear about the fact that she remembered nothing about the fall or why she was even up walking around. We all noticed her hair was no longer lustrous and was now very thin. There were signs but in January GC's long time boyfriend left and I have to say I thought she was in a depression.

So it was no wonder she was at emergency levels when she went to a walk in clinic where the doc told her she had chronic fatigue syndrome. GC said her eyes rolled so hard she had to pick them up at the side of the room. Luckily that same doc had ordered blood tests and at 11pm at night the phone started ringing off the hook. My Aunt picked up and was told to get GC to the hospital immediately and when they got there the ER peeps were waiting for her.

Scary stuff but oh so glad they finally figured it out! Her sugar was at like 50 (normal range is between 4 and 6) - a few days later they let her go home and whenever I talk to her now she says she feels so alert. That she had felt like she was walking around in a fog for months. Yikes!

She's an ECE (early childcare educator) and works for little money and no benefits and this stuff is expensive. So the family is trying to help her out without getting my Aunt's ire up ;) Aunt N is protective and tries to get us not to spoil GC.

But we do so love to spoil her.

So I'm working on ways to buy the needles and strips and my mom mentioned the other night that she would talk to Aunt N about buying GC her insulin. Last we heard it was 300 a month. GC doesn't have that kind of spare coin laying around at the end of every month. GC is very thrifty and knows how to save money but in January she started an online course to teach kids with Autism. She's hoping to get in at that school level and we're all hoping that will come with a raise and benefits.

Childcare is such a hard thing to wrap my head around. My cousin says she could change diapers in her sleep and she is the most patient young women I've ever met. I, of course, think she should be earning 6 figures but then how would the people who need daycare for the kids so they can go to work, ever afford it.

That's the pure definition of a Catch 22. She is there with people's kids when they cry and want their parents, she's there to teach them shapes and colours, she's there to clean them up and feed them, in the end, she does much more than a teacher (although trust me, I have a healthy respect for teachers) as she also deals with kids with Autism, Down Syndrome, and learning disabilities. There is no division between kids with special needs and those who need less help but just as much nurturing.

Obviously you can tell I love her so much. I told her once that she saved my life and I meant it. She was born when I was 15 and at the height of my panic attacks. GC was born and the family's attention was no longer on me and I was able to settle down. She's the youngest on our side of the family so spoiling her seemed like a right for me. But Aunt N is scary although she is the quietest person on the planet. You know, quiet person, ginormous stick to beat you with. Just saying. Even Bob knows not to wake the peaceful Aunt cause she'll take no prisoners!

Course, that doesn't stop the rest of us from figuring out ways to get GC stuff.

So I'm looking at Canadian Diabetic Cookbooks (American cookbooks measure everything differently than up here - GC's blood meter gives her the reading and no math is needed. Apparently the meters in US read differently and math is a skill set required to figure things out) anyways she showed me the one Canadian cookbook she liked while shopping the other night. Aunt N was looking over my shoulder so grabbing it and running to the cash was not an option. However, ordering the books and having them here when they come for Bob's b-day on Saturday - I mean really, they just showed up and how can she kill me with witnesses?

She can't right?

Hee, hee. I think this is why I get monkeys for gifts, cause I'm always monkeying around with the rules the family tries to get me to live by.

Okay, off to order a couple of books for GC. One is a slow cooker recipe book which I think will be right up my Aunt's cooking aisle.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Turns out the February blahs skipped out and showed up in March. The buggers.

So we're not really doing much and yet we're out and about visiting and seeing people. Still, at about 2am I'm feeling all frenzied and want out of the house.

Bob's heading out for the week on Monday and best bud and son will come and stay over night Monday to Tuesday. That's rough for someone like me and my sleep schedule. But I find I get tired easy if I'm up and 'on' all day.

Gorgeous Cousin came and stayed the night last week and I was able to get 8 hours of sleep and get up at 8:30am. She left around 1pm and then my other best bud and her SO came about 3pm - went to dinner and then sat and visited for much of the night. So I done good.

I have Jennifer Estep's book in my TBR hands and got to the first page the other night.

Yum.

Now, to just carve out some Cindy time.

Okay, I have a lot of Cindy time but I find the winter makes me co-dependent on the TV and computer. I'm currently addicted to too many facebook games and my ass is so looking forward to spring so I don't abuse it by sitting in my chair with my feet up on the desk all hours of the day/night.

On another note I've done something to the setting on blogger (I think) and the comment pages and now this window I'm typing in are HUGE. I need to figure out what it is I do when the mouse scrolly thing makes the screen larger and smaller. Normally it just scrolls but I hit something and bam, the screens are zooming in and out.

Other than that, nothing new happening. I want to spend money cause Bob and I have been thrifty to the extreme although the last two weeks saw us spending more than normal. Gorgeous Cousin has to watch her money and things like needles, insulin and sugar substitutes are killer expensive so Bob and I bought a few things for her.

Then the birthdays.

Oy.

Best buds are turning 40 this month so 'special' gifts needed to be bought (that's on me), one 7 year old needs a gift and Bob's birthday is on the 22nd.

And I had to buy the antivirus program.

Ow.

The good news is I have a 50 dollar Chapters gift certificate to spend. Wheeeee. Although I'm going to be looking at some diabetes books. I'm sure I can still squeeze some fun out of the card though.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

I'm sure you all know I don't like last minute plans. Anxiety and all that stunning crap.

Actually, it's not so much last minute plans as plans that haven't quite gelled.

Tomorrow I think GC is coming for 'Glee Night'. We're going to sit and watch Glee from beginning episode to the end. I think she wants Bob to join us but he's not really a Glee kind of guy. And there are no places in our home where more than 2 people can watch the TV at a time. So I'm thinking he's going to lose out.

I don't know is GC is going to stay the night though. What has this got to do with anything?

I have to clean up whichever room she will stay in. And yeah, the bathrooms and stuff. BUT, if she can't stay over, no laundry for me.

Also a best bud is turning 40 on the weekend. Last weekend her SO asked if we would be available to go out for dinner which I said 'hell ya!'. I haven't heard a peep since. So, are we going or not? Do I need to figure out what I'm getting her or not? Do I have to spend the money now or do I wait until I know for sure I'll see her and pitch the cash then?

Getting down to the point.

Do I have to shake off the lazy or can I roll around in it just a little bit longer?

Oh and Nath - my plan is to read Jennifer Estep's book over the next week. See, if I knew my weekend was free, I could start the book now, but not knowing, I don't dare start something I can't finish when I damn well want to!

Monday, March 01, 2010

I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket and with Nath's review of Jennifer Estep's new book I knew it was time to crack it out!

Never heard of the author but Nath's review and subsequent decision that this might just be her best book of the year and it's only March!? made it an easy decision.

And hey, I need to read outside of my box every once in a while but an assassin heroine? Totally in my box.

That is where I ran out of ideas on what to buy. So I went through the 'new release' section and discovered a few books that fit in that online cart quite nicely.Julie James. I have to say I'm late loading onto this band wagon but I'm nothing if not an avid book buyer.

We'll see what I think when I finally (and we know that might be in the next few years) get down to reading it.

And I like the cover.

Then I saw the release date of the next Pamela Clare book and just had to buy.

I loved, loved, loved Ride The Fire but have not got around to reading more books by Ms. Clare. I'm thinking that's been a horrible oversight and I need to fix it next to immediately.

The next two books by Lisa Marie Rice surprised me as I didn't even know they existed. I don't know whether people are reading them and thinking 'meh' or I missed the glowing reviews. So I took a chance and bought the two I didn't own.

There's a part of me that understands making the books look similar. At least, I think I understand. Is it branding?

Cause here's the thing. How do you guys know if you already own the book if it looks so similar to the one you already have at home?

For J.R. Ward it's 'Lover' on all the titles and damn if I know which book is which. I can't even tell by the covers.

Pamela Clare's recent books also look similar with the bands on the top and bottom.

In all honesty, I bought these books because they all (except the one) had release dates this week! So I knew they weren't in my TBR pile but if I was at the bookstore? Sure, I could check the copyright date but odds are I just see the one book (cause how often do the bookstores have all the booksby an author in stock) and figure, yep, have it. Or, yep, read it.

It makes me wonder about those readers who aren't online. The regular romance reader. Maybe they have way better memories than I do but if a book looks the same and has a title somewhat the same, how do they know to pick the book up?

Being the lazy one I am, I don't want to have to return things so I would be more apt to not pick up the book and maybe next time I'm in I'll have checked somewhere and know what's going on. Which normally happens never.

And that's just the way my brain is rumbling today.

I wanted to put up a commercial like Kristie did that has played here for a few months and always gets my blood pumping in a good way but I think lots of people are trying to post it so here the link - watch your sound - don't want to blow you out of your seat.